Wish List

Monday, November 26, 2012

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, we celebrated my granddaughter Lucy's 6th birthday. She wanted me to make her a Barbie ballerina cake. It's hard not to give a little girl the cake she desires, so I decided to see if it could be done with an angel food cake. I made the cake as I usually do in my angel food cake pan. I also purchased a Barbie ballerina. When my daughter Shanna and her family arrived, she took over the task of decorating the cake.

We first measured the height of the center hole and cut a piece of paper towel tube to fit. We removed Barbie's legs (she was too tall for the cake) and put her remaining torso into the cardboard tube to hold her up in the center of the cake. My daughter trimmed off the sides of the cake to form Barbie's "skirt." Then she frosted it with some pale pink 7-minute frosting and decorated with a tube of purple icing and some candies.

Here's the result:

I think Lucy was very pleased with her cake and we had fun making it. It is super easy to do when you use an angel food cake pan, and I liked having those plain pieces of cake that were cut off. I'd rather eat cake with no frosting on it! We were also able to snap Barbie's legs back on after we ate the cake and give the doll to Lucy as an additional gift.

I also made Lucy a special card for her birthday. I recently won the Hoot 'n' Holler cartridge and wanted to use that for the main image. It has so many cute owls and sentiments on it.

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﻿I used some aqua and lime green glitter papers for the owl and gave her a little party hat. The sentiment was cut from plain papers but I added lots of stickles for some more sparkle. I don't have any Action Wobbles, but I still wanted to give the owl the ability to "boogie." I made a spring out of some heavy jewelry wire that I had on hand and adhered it to the back of the owl and to the card. Here's a picture of the spring. It's terribly out of focus, but you get the idea.

The inside of the card was pretty simple:

Thank so much for stopping by today. Remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

This will be the last Thanksgiving card I share with you--promise! I'm so ready to move on to Christmas cards.

This card was fun to try. I attempted to give my stamping a distressed look by not loading the stamp with too much ink and stamping off, if necessary. I also used the "rock and roll" method of inking a stamp and then rolling its edges in another color ink pad.

Rather than me telling you how to accomplish this look, I'd rather give credit to France Martin at www.frenchiestamps.com. She has a great video here that will teach you exactly what you need to do.

I think I made this technique a little trickier than it need be because I used so many different ink colors. I'm going to try it again using a single color and some different stamps and see how it goes.

Here's a peek at the inside. I just used one of the same stamps that I had used on the front, stamping off to give it a distressed look.

Thanks for stopping by today, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.Cheryl
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Monday, November 19, 2012

First of all, let me get this out of the way: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHELLE!

I made her a birthday card from the packaging material from two embossing folders that I actually sent to her as a little gift a while back. I'd been admiring the clear cards on many of the blogs I read each day and decided it was my turn to give it a try. Here's the result:

Clear cards are horribly difficult to photograph, and when you toss in my lack of photography skills and a total absence of knowledge about lighting, etc., this is the best you can expect. I took this photo on my back porch where it was bright but not overly sunny.

The teal patterned paper was cut with a Lifestyle Crafts die and is adhered to the back side of the card front. The two label shapes (also cut with Lifestyle Crafts dies) and the flower are on the front of the card. The scalloped rectangle is held on with some double-sided tape in the center (under the label shapes) and a tiny glue dot under each pearl in the corners. That way, none of the adhesive is visible.

I cut the yellow flower from the Flower Shoppe cartridge. The center is made by punching a couple of star-like flowers from white CS, shaping the petals and adding a pearl cluster in the center. The punch I used is a May flowers squeeze punch by Fiskars. It's one of the oldest punches I own and I use it all the time for flower centers.

The inside is finished with the same scalloped rectangle on the back with a plain rectangle, sized to fit, on the inside. All the adhesive was hidden between the two pieces.

The sentiment is a Fiskars stamp from their birthday collection. I'd tell you how old my sister is today, but since I'm sure she'll be following this advice and lying about her age, I'd better not say anything to keep her little fib believable. LOL

I hope you enjoyed seeing my first attempt at a clear card. It was fun, and I felt good about recycling some packaging material for the card base. I sure hope my sister enjoyed receiving it.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.Cheryl

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Continuing with my series of Thanksgiving cards, here's one that uses the dry embossing technique.

I really love this "Bird Call" embossing folder by Cuttlebug. It truly has an autumn feel to it and a certain poignancy with the lone bird looking off into the distance. I've used this embossing folder for men's cards, too, and it works very well for that.

The color in the photo at right is off, but I think you can see how I have used some Vintage Photo distress ink to define the embossing and darken the edges of the circle.

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Here are the two cards I made with this embossed image, matted with some gold cardstock. The sentiments were heat embossed with burnished gold embossing powder.

The plaid paper and the green cardstock came from the same DCWV stack and match perfectly. I also added a thin gold ribbon and two faux gold brads on each card to tie it all together.

Thanks for stopping by today, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.Cheryl

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Today's Thanksgiving card is more on the feminine side with a flower and lace. The flower was an image that I found online and printed out on some light taupe paper a long, long time ago. I printed it three times and fussy cut a bottom (largest) layer, middle layer and smallest top layer. I colored in only parts of the flower, separated the layers with foam tape, and added an adhesive-backed gem to the top.

I adhered lace to both long sides of a strip of craft cardstock and then adhered a piece of satin ribbon across the center.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

This is one of the simplest Thanksgiving cards I made--and also one of my favorites. It has an earthy, honest look to it, with a little bit of bling for fun. I think I'm going to make a couple more of these, as it was quick and fun!

I simply cut the branch using the Art Philosophy cardtridge, ignoring the layers that were available. I heat embossed "Happy Thanksgiving" with some burnished gold embossing powder and used a decorative corner punch on the top left corner to balance out the weight of the sentiment.

Here's a close-up of the branch with it's bling. Talk about quick, easy, fun - this card was all three!

The inside was just as simple: computer generated sentiment, strip of craft cardstock at the bottom and a couple of stamped leaves. Easy, peasy!

Thanks for stopping by today, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.Cheryl﻿

Sunday, November 11, 2012

I have another Thanksgiving card to share with you today. These two cards were actually the very first ones that I made.

The decorative circle is cut with a Lifestyle Crafts die and the leaves were cut with the Art Philosophy cartridge. I just can't say enough good things about that cartridge! The Art Philosophy bundle also came with some high-quality clear stamps, one of which I used to stamp the leaves. All the correct cut sizes are listed with the stamps so that you get an exact match. How cool is that?

Here's a closeup of those leaves. You can see that I've curled the edges up a bit for some more dimension. I even put one of my homemade glue dots under the orange one to raise it up a bit more. The brown twine was some that I happened to have on hand.

Here's a look at the inside of the card. I inked around the edges of the sentiment card, added a decoratively cut strip of the patterned paper and one of the Maple leaves.

Thanks for stopping by today. Don't forget to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!Cheryl﻿
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Friday, November 9, 2012

Can you believe it is less than 2 weeks until Thanksgiving? I cannot believe how quickly it is approaching. And if we think Thanksgiving is coming quickly, Christmas is tight on its coat tails and will be here before we can blink!

I am hoping to finish up my Thanksgiving cards this weekend so that I can mail them sometime next week. That means that my next few posts will be the cards I have managed to create. I tend to make several different "models" of cards, just to make it more fun and interesting to me. I only make about 15 cards, so it's easy enough to do a few different designs.

Here's the first of the bunch:

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When I started this card, I was hoping to make the process a lot simpler than it ended up being--but I didn't like the first result, so I kept adding techniques. I had cut quite a few Maple leaves, using the Art Philosophy cartridge. I laid a few of them on a piece of craft cardstock and then lightly sprayed the card with some bronze Maya Road spritz. I didn't think this defined the leaves enough, so I took a black pen and drew in the stitch lines around each leaf shape. It still wasn't right! I then took out my distress inks and added a little color to each of the leaves with a sponge. Finally, I was getting somewhere!

I selected a label shape from Art Philosophy and created a shadow for it on my Gypsy, cut them both out and printed the sentiment on the white label with my computer. The labels are attached with double-sided foam tape. A bit of grosgrain ribbon and a sparkly gold faux brad completed the look.

On the inside, I stamped "Happy Thanksgiving" along with a couple of Maple leaves (which I stamped off first). You can see in the photo at left that "Happy" doesn't look straight. This can be a common problem with clear stamps - they don't always hold their shape and you have to look at them VERY carefullly on your stamp block to make sure they haven't curved as this one did. Lesson learned.
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I hope you are well on your way to having your Thanksgiving cards done and ready to send. Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day.Cheryl

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Whenever I can, I like to use my Cricut to help decorate packages. It's a great way to try some new cuts. It's so much easier to adhere the layers when they're cut in a larger size. Here's a package I decorated recently:

"Hoo's having a BIRTHDAY" was cut from the Hoot 'n' Holler cartridge, and the little pink owl was cut from Kate's ABCs. I simply hand cut the cloud to show off the sentiment a little better.
Isn't that a cute owl? I added some sparkle to the feather lines on his belly and to his eyes. Since this if for a very girly little girl, I knew she'd like a little glitter.

I also added a little glitter to the word "BIRTHDAY."

For this package, I simply used some glittery pink chipboard letters and some flowers. Easy, peasy, and just right for a little girl.

Here's a look at both of them together.

Thanks for stopping by today. Don't forget to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!Cheryl

Friday, November 2, 2012

Just a quick post today. I wanted to share with you just how we welcomed all the wonderful little trick-or-treaters to our door on Halloween night. Remember the spider that I made? If not, you can check it out and see a close-up photo in the previous post. Here's how we displayed the spider on our front door:

The "BOO!" was painted onto the glass with some acryllic paint. It's easy enough to scrape it off with a razor blade when Halloween is over.

As you can see, I always carve a couple of pumpkins.

I love to add "hair" to Mrs. Pumplin. I simply use some sparkly, colored pipe cleaners and twist each one around my finger to create curls. I make some tiny holes in the top of the pumpkin with a sharp skewer or nail and stick the pipe cleaners in.

I decided Mr. Pumpkin needed a hat, so I grabbed an old New Year's hat that we had in our costume box. Since it said "Happy New Year" on the front, I made a Happy Halloween sign to cover it up.

You may be noticing that you can see tin foil inside the pumpkins. Well, you're right, there is tin foil in there! I always carve my pumpkins on October 31st. I line them with tin foil not only to help reflect the candle light, but also to keep the pumpkin meat fresh and protected from the candle. As soon as the trick-or-treaters stop coming, I bring them in and bake them. After they have cooled, I put the mashed pumpkin into ziploc bags--2 cups per bag--and freeze it. That way we have pumpkin all year long.

I hope you all had as much fun on Halloween as we did.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to laugh--a little or a lot--every day!Cheryl